Indulging myself

I haven't been here in a very long time.  I liked the idea of journaling about our homeschooling experience but, in practice, I couldn't find a balance between the way I would journal for myself and the way I would journal for an audience.   It alternated between feeling like bragging and feeling like making a long, boring, public To-Do list.   It never settled into a rhythm that felt authentic and comfortable.  And so I wandered away and just never seemed to get around to wandering back.

And then today I came across an article on the gender issues of food writing.  It was a well-argued, well-written article, and I can see where the author was coming from -- that so often women's writing and conversation is focused on food restrictions (for health or for weight control)  or on cooking for their families, while men who cook and write about cooking tend to focus on the more glamourous worlds of fine dining and experimental gastronomy, free of any expectation that they should be focused on the domestic or on the tiresome, ubiquitous world of body- and diet-policing.

I was struck, though, by the author's objection to the use of the word "indulging" -- as if indulgence requires that one is enjoying something wicked or unhealthy, or that it's somehow mutually exclusive with responsibility or virtue.

What a small, sad way of looking at indulgence.  "Allow oneself to enjoy the pleasure of"; "to take unrestrained pleasure in"; "to yield to desire"...  There's no reason for these moments to involve guilt or shame or negative self-talk.

Our lives should be full of indulgences, of yielding to pleasure and desire.  I indulge all day long -- in a cup of my favorite tea, in a good book, in a conversation with a dear friend, in my favorite breakfast (black beans and rice with avocado, tomatoes, and a squeeze of lime), in a short nap, in a long walk, in a half an hour with my banjo, in a workout that leaves me feeling strong and awesome, in the satisfaction of a job well done (whether that job is my day job at an alternative school or one of my avocations).  

A few months ago I was at a fancy-schmancy party.  The fancy-schmanciest party I have ever attended -- it was a fundraiser for an organization at which I sometimes volunteer.  A fancy-schmancy stranger asked me about myself, and my response was to tell her that I'm a homeschooling mom, and to talk to her about the veggies I've been enjoying from my CSA.  I could have told her about the school I'm helping to co-found, or about my experiences volunteering for the organization, but talking about being home with my daughter and my vegetables felt more true than any other answer.  Telling a friend about it a couple days later, I found myself describing in detail my favorite part of the summer -- that we'd finally figured out an evening routine that makes us all happy, and how much I'm enjoying experimenting with what to put out for our 5:00 snack, before we settle down to do something fun together.  Because, as I told her, I'm a Hobbit at heart, and food and music and my home and my friends and my family...  those are my passions, and my indulgences.  Those are the places my heart lies.

And those passions and indulgences, much more than a list of exactly which books we're reading at any given time, are a much more accurate picture of our homeschooling experience, a much more accurate picture of the Hobbity little life in which we're indulging.

So, perhaps, exploring those passions and indulgences here will get me wandering back in this direction...